


Making A Home In Your Arms

by Lann_the_cleverest



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lann_the_cleverest/pseuds/Lann_the_cleverest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A request for Loras/Renly hurt/comfort fic.</p><p>This is set pre-series, about six months after Loras comes to Storms End.  He is around 12 (just about to turn 13), and Renly is around 15-16.  And Loras is homesick.  Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making A Home In Your Arms

Loras wasn’t scared of the cliffs – he rode his pony along the edge close enough that the horse master bellowed at him and threatened to have him thrashed for it. He never did though, and Loras never stopped riding close to the edge. He wasn’t afraid of high things, or disgusting bugs – he wasn’t even afraid of the howling winds that moaned around the castle during storms the way some of the younger pages were. He was brave and bold and daring, a diligent squire, and he held lance and sword as though he was the warrior reborn – and Renly was in awe of him.

So it was with great surprise that he woke up and heard quiet crying from the adjoining room that his squire was using. The lord of Storms End lay still in his bed and listened to be sure of what he was hearing. He had been locked away with Maester Cresson all day, and had fallen into bed without having seen Loras since breakfast, and his heart ached to hear his sweet friend sobbing into his pillow. It vexed him greatly to not know what was bothering the pretty Highgardener, and so he slipped on his green velvet bedrobe and moved from the warmth of his furs, padding across the floor to the other room. The door opened silently and there was Loras, face down on his bed, in his loose shirt and breeches, his boots kicked off across the floor. The room was messier than Renly had expected… his training pads were dropped where he had ripped them off, scattered about the floor, and his clothing trunk had been kicked violently so it had spun from its usual position at the end of Loras’ bed. From what Renly saw as he surveyed the room, it looked as though Loras’ diligence in keeping things proper and neat extended to his squiring duties only.

The first Loras noticed of him was as the bed dipped and he placed a hand on the younger boy’s back. Loras yelped in surprise, and spun himself about, red-eyed and so fierce he almost looked frightened. He had certainly been crying. “Whatever is the matter?” Renly asked before Loras could put himself back together enough to hide his vulnerability. Loras was nearly three and ten, and hungry to please, and weakness was, well…weakness. He would not, could not show it to his lord, but he had been at the castle for almost half a year and was quickly coming to be what Renly wanted more than anything – a friend. Friends could show this sort of thing to one another without repercussion, and so Loras clung to him the way he would have done to Garlan if he had been at home. And that thought of his brother coupled with the green of Renly’s robe brought him to fresh tears, clutched against Renly’s chest, soaking the velvet with his grief. “I miss them so much,” he mumbled, the words half drowned by the thick pile of the velvet he was speaking into. But Renly heard it. 

As he stroked his hand comfortingly through the long curls, he had the whole sorry tale snivelled against and hiccoughed against him. Loras, it transpired, had outgrown the training armour that he had been sent from Highgarden with – things that his brothers had had commissioned specially in fine materials, and a bright white where the less well-off pages wore a more dingy or basic grey. Loras had not wanted to cast off the colours and cloths of home and so he had, foolishly, continued to wear it, though the body pad no longer covered the fronts of his shoulders or the sides of his ribs – a fact which had been most detrimental in this afternoon’s training which had been against the Master at Arms himself rather than his fellow squires (all of whom, Renly was proud to know, Loras could best in a heartbeat). Worse still, when he came away bruised from the vigorous sparring – his first real loss since he had begun to train in Storms End – there had been no sweet little Margarey to daub ointment on his bruises, and Garlan hadn’t been there to sit with him and tell him where he could do better while still telling him he had done brilliantly and would one day be the best that there ever was. 

He missed his family, and while Renly couldn’t understand it for himself after having been alone for most of his life with brothers far away, hateful and distant, he still knew that he wanted Loras to have whatever would make him stop hurting. But this wish he could not grant – a squire could not go home, particularly not over something as trivial as an ache or homesickness without risking shame and ruin of his reputation. More selfishly, he did not want Loras to go home, or anywhere at all that he could not follow. And so he took the younger boy’s soft cheeks between his hands and brought a chaste kiss down on Loras’ cheek. “I cannot send you back to Highgarden,” he said quietly, voice a deep thrum that still felt unfamiliar so low in his chest. The other youth’s face fell, but Renly pressed on. “But I can be as family to you,” he offered with his heart thundering in his ears. 

Loras’ eyes shone with joy at that, and he threw himself hard into Renly’s arms, embracing him fierce enough that a lesser man’s bones would have cracked with the force. He daubed ointment on Loras’ bruises, and when it was done, they curled into Renly’s bed which was big enough for them both (though it felt as though they would have fit in a cradle together, the way they were lying so close and entwined). It was not Highgarden, and Renly was not his brother (both of them hoped in their secret hearts that he would become so much more than a brother) but despite the differences from the place that Loras had grown up, Renly hoped to himself that it seemed like a kind of home none-the-less. And when he saw Loras asleep in his arms curled close and smiling, all his earlier sorrow forgotten, Renly thought that he might just have succeeded in making the boy feel at home with him. Renly did not think that either of them would ever feel alone again, so long as they had one another.


End file.
